The invention concerns a band welding installation or strip welding plant for joining band ends in a processing line transverse to the direction of the band run. In band welding installations, bands of any given length are produced by welding together plates, sheet bars, bands for continuous processing in rolling mills or operations processing the material in rolling bands. Thereby, high demands are placed on the welding joints in respect to tensile and transverse stress. Thus, the welding seam must be free of pores and penetration notches, must have a root face that is well and evenly welded, and must be possible to roll out.
When running through annealing installations, the welding seam itself must be secure even at high annealing temperatures, even though bands of different material qualities, widths, and thicknesses may have been joined.
A combined band welding installation with remote control is known, which is distributed by the company Oxytechnik under the name of Kontinumat. For producing a constant welding slot, this known installation has a built-in cutter with double cutting action which hydraulically activated, cuts the beginning and the end of the band simultaneously. Thereby, the band ends are fixed and clamped down in position by means of combined gripping and clamping units. Due to the combination of the double-action cutter with the gripping and clamping device in one machine, there is no drift travel of the free band after the cutting. Soiling of and damage to the cut ends of the band cannot occur. Since both ends of the band are cut simultaneously, the cut ends (welding seam ends) are mirror images of one another. During the cutting, the jaws of the gripping device serve to hold the band down. After the cutting, the band ends are clamped into the clamping bar and are joined in that manner for welding. Thereby, the combination of cutting and joining take place automatically by remote control. Only the welding is initiated by hand. Here, manual correction of the initial position is necessary if the rapid start of the chassis with the welding torch is not precise. The same applies in case of a centering and/or elevation deviation of the welding torch. Consequently, the obtained quality of the welding seam depends on the professional qualifications and the observation and reaction capabilities of the person executing this action.